Blithe Spirit – Reviews Round-up

A round-up of reviews for Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre starring Alison Steadman.

Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit has opened at the Apollo Theatre featuring an all-star cast including Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey), Ruthie Henshall (Chicago), Hermione Norris (Spooks) and Robert Bathurst (Hattie), and directed by Thea Sharrock (After the Dance).

Read reviews of Blithe Spirit from the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and Daily Mail, below.

Book tickets to see Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre in London

Opening this week: Blithe Spirit, Flare Path

Première’s this week in the West End include Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit starring Alison Steadman and Ruthie Henshall, Sienna Miller in Flare Path, Polly Rae in Hurly Burly, Matthew Kelly in Sign of the Times and the Olivier Awards this Sunday 13 March.

Monday 7 March

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Tim Firth’s new play Sign of the Times starts previews at the Duchess Theatre tonight, with its press night on Friday. The Calendar Girls author has written a warm and witty comedy about a disillusioned sign erector whose life is changed by a clumsy teenager. The show stars Matthew Kelly and Shameless actor Gerard Kearns.

Wednesday 9 March

BLITHE SPIRIT: Noel Coward’s blissful comedy Blithe Spirit officially opens at the Apollo Theatre tonight featuring an all-star cast including Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey), Ruthie Henshall (Chicago), Hermione Norris (Spooks) and Robert Bathurst (Hattie). The revival is directed by the award-winning Thea Sharrock (After the Dance).

Thursday 10 March

FLARE PATH: Trevor Nunn kicks off as artistic director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket with the press night for Flare Path. Terence Rattigan’s Second World War romance stars Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith.

Friday 11 March

HURLY BURLY: Salacious show Hurly Burly opens at the Garrick Theatre, featuring the luscious Miss Polly Rae in an all singing, all dancing burlesque-inspired revue, with a contemporary twist. Long-time Kylie collaborator William Baker directs.

Sunday 13 March 2011

OLIVIER AWARDS: The Olivier Awards are tonight at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, promising a high star quotient at the UK theatre’s most important event. This year’s ceremony is hosted by Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, and you can tune in live to hear who wins on Radio 2 or via the BBC’s red button TV service. Visit our Olivier Awards micro-site here.

LINKS

Shows – tickets and booking information
Olivier Awards 2011

Photos: Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit

Production photos of Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre in London.

Noel Coward’s blissful comedy Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre features an all-star cast including Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey), Ruthie Henshall (Chicago), Hermione Norris (Spooks) and Robert Bathurst (Hattie). The Theatre Royal Bath revival is directed by the award-winning Thea Sharrock (After the Dance).

In the play, the novelist Charles Condomine (Bathurst) and his second wife Ruth (Norris) are haunted when an eccentric medium (Steadman) manages to conjure up the ghost of Charles’s neurotic and beautiful first wife, Elvira (Henshall), at a séance.

LINKS

Book tickets to Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre

New this week: Oz, Blithe Spirit, Flare Path

Some big-hitting West End shows open this week in London, including The Wizard of Oz, Million Dollar Quartet, Flare Path and Blithe Spirit.

Monday 28 February 2011

Million Dollar Quartet, the musical that recreates the historic day when Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis all made music together, opens tonight at the Noel Coward Theatre starring a multi-talented cast including Bill Ward (Coronation Street).

Tuesday 1 March 2011

It’s the premiere tonight of the musical that has received more publicity, hype and good old-fashioned audience anticipation than any other show for years as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sparkly new production of The Wizard of Oz opens at the London Palladium. Rebooted by Jeremy Sams and produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Bill Kenwright, the show sees Over The Rainbow star Danielle Hope make her West End stage debut joined by Michael Crawford as the Wizard and Hannah Waddingham as the Wicked Witch.

Also today, tickets go on sale for the Olivier Awards at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The 13th March ceremony is open to theatregoers for the first time and promises a starry night of West End celebs and excerpts from the shows.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Noel Coward’s blissful comedy Blithe Spirit starts previews at the Apollo Theatre featuring an all-star cast including Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey), Ruthie Henshall (Chicago), Hermione Norris (Spooks) and Robert Bathurst (Hattie). The revival is directed by the award-winning Thea Sharrock (After the Dance).

Thursday 3 March 2011

Previews starts for Hurly Burly at the Garrick Theatre, featuring the luscious Miss Polly Rae in an all singing, all dancing burlesque-inspired revue with a contemporary twist.

Also tonight, In A Forest, Dark and Deep starts previews at the Vaudeville Theatre with Lost star Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer) in Neil LaBute’s new psychological thriller.

Friday 4 March 2011

Trevor Nunn begins his artistic directorship of the Theatre Royal Haymarket tonight with the start of previews for Flare Path. Terence Rattigan’s Second World War romance sees Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith star.

Saturday 5 March 2011

Kneehigh theare company, who scored a huge hit in London and on Broadway with their stage take on Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, are back with a brand new production. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, based on the classic French film, begins previews at the Gielgud Theatre tonight starring Joanna Riding, Meow Meow and Andrew Durand.

Also on Saturday, A Flea in Her Ear closes at the Old Vic Theatre starring Tom Hollander and Ordinary Days starring Daniel Boys ends at the Trafalgar Studios.

Clybourne Park scoops awards

Bruce Norris’s new play Clybourne Park, produced by the Royal Court last year and transferring to the Wyndham’s Theatre from 28 January, has scooped two major best new play awards.

In ceremonies held today in central London, the South Bank Sky Arts Awards and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards both presented Clybourne Park with Best New Play gongs.

The Royal Court also picked up two more awards from the Critics’ Circle, both mirroring their wins at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year: the Most Promising Playwright Award for Anya Reiss’s Spur of the Moment and Daniel Kaluuya for most promising newcomer for Sucker Punch.

The National, RSC and Donmar Warehouse also did well from the Critics’ Circle awards with Michael Grandage and Thea Sharrock  jointly awarded best director for King Lear at the Donmar and After the Dance at the National respectively.

Other winners included theatre veterans David Suchet receiving a best actor award for All My Sons at the Apollo and Derek Jacobi a best Shakespearean performance award for King Lear at the Donmar. Best musical went to the RSC’s Matilda The Musical based on Roald Dahl’s popular children’s book and best actress was awarded to Jenny Jules for her performance in Ruined at the Almeida.

The South Bank Sky Arts Awards led by Melvyn Bragg, the first to be presented by the Sky Arts channel following ITV’s axing of Bragg’s South Bank Show last year, saw Dame Judi Dench awarded the Outstanding Achievement award. Alongside Clybourne Park’s win, best opera production was awarded to Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg from Welsh National Opera and best dance was Akram Khan’s Gnosis at Sadler’s Wells.

LINKS

Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2010 – full list of winners

South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2011 – full list of winners

BOOK

Book tickets to Clybourne Park at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London

Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards – Winners 2010

Awards announced: 25 January 2011, Prince of Wales Theatre London

Best New Play:
Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
Presented by Kate Bassett

The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical (new or revival):
Matilda, A Musical
Presented by Matt Wolf

Best Actor:
David Suchet in All My Sons
Presented by Charles Spencer

Best Actress:
Jenny Jules in Ruined
Presented by Jane Edwardes

The John and Wendy Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance:
Derek Jacobi in King Lear
Presented by Michael Billington

Best Director:
Awarded jointly to: Michael Grandage for King Lear
Presented by Georgina Brown
&
Thea Sharrock for After the Dance
Presented by Claire Allfree

Best Designer: Bunny Christie for The White Guard
Presented by Paul Taylor

Most Promising Playwright:
Anya Reiss for Spur of the Moment
Presented by Ian Shuttleworth

The Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer (other than a playwright):
Daniel Kaluuya for Sucker Punch
Presented by Henry Hitchings

Women Playwrights in the West End

Maggie B Gale’s excellent book West End Women: Women and the London stage 1918 – 1962 reveals the vital place of women playwrights within West End theatre history.

During a dynamic and often turbulent time for women, from 1918 when some women were granted the vote, to the start of the women’s movement in the early 1960s, women playwrights made an enormous contribution to the life of London theatre. This contribution had been largely ignored until Gale’s book was published in 1996.

Even today, high-profile women playwrights such as Lucy Prebble (Enron) and directors such as Thea Sharrock (After the Dance) are still in the minority within commercial London theatre. And yet recent productions of classic plays by women from the period of the book, including Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, currently playing at the Comedy Theatre starring Keira Knightley, and Michael Grandage’s Donmar production of Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, to be aired on Radio 3 this year, demonstrate an ongoing – and increasing – interest in this work.

Gale’s book takes a fascinating look at pioneering playwrights such as Clemence Dane, Gordon Daviot, Dodie Smith, Esther McCracken and Bridget Boland and examines the place of women in society through the 20th Century alongside representations of working women, motherhood and the family, and the lives of women living without men.

The book’s appendix reveals a comprehensive list of staged productions of women playwrights in London, and is posted here with kind permission from Maggie Gale.

TABLE INDEX

Tables of plays by women on the London stage 1917 – 1959:

• COMPLETE TABLE – Productions 1917 – 1960
• Productions 1917 – 1929
• Productions 1930 – 1939
• Productions 1940 – 1949
• Productions 1950 – 1960

BOOK SHOP

Amazon: Buy West End Women by Maggie B Gale

FREDDIE FOX in Cause Celebre

Up and coming Freddie Fox, from the Fox acting dynasty, to star in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre

It’s hard to find a young actor better connected to the profession than Freddie Fox, 21.

Son of actors Edward Fox and Joanna David, brother to Emilia Fox, nephew of James Fox, cousin of Laurence Fox, godson of John Mortimer, great grandson of famous dramatist Frederick Lonsdale, the list goes on and on.

Fox only graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama last year, but has immediately found work – notably in two major TV dramas, playing 80s pop star Marilyn in the BBC’s Boy George biopic Worried About the Boy and the young version of writer Peter Scabius in Any Human Heart, the high-profile Channel 4 adaptation of William Boyd’s novel.

Up next he plays a bisexual assassin in BBC thriller-noir The Shadow Line alongside an impressive cast that includes Christopher Eccleston, Sir Antony Sher, Stephen Rea and Chiwetel Ejiofor. And he won’t have to travel far to get to work in Cause Celebre: Freddie can be currently seen starring as cleft-palated Camille in Feydeau’s farce A Flea In Her Ear at the Old Vic, opposite Tom Hollander.

Cause Celebre also stars Anne-Marie Duff, Niamh Cusack, Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

The play opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 29 March 2011, with previews from 17 March. It is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury, who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England.

Thea Sharrock directed Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre earlier this year and will direct Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit from 2 March 2011 at the Apollo Theatre.

Book tickets to see Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

NIAMH CUSACK in Cause Celebre

Niamh Cusack to star alongside Anne-Marie Duff in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre at the Old Vic

Niamh Cusack returns to the London stage this spring in Thea Sharrock’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Celebre, timed for the writer’s centenary in 2011.

Cusack, whose father was acclaimed Irish actor Cyril Cusack and her sister Sinead is also an accomplished actress, has worked extensively in theatre, film and  TV. Stage roles include Dancing at Lughnasa at The Old Vic, Portrait Of A Lady at the Theatre Royal Bath and His Dark Materials at The National Theatre. TV work includes The Last Detective and Heartbeat and film roles include The Closer You Get, Playboys and Shadow Under The Sun.

Cause Celebre also stars Anne-Marie Duff, Lucy Black, Timothy Carlton, Simon Chandler, Richard Clifford, Oliver Coopersmith, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Freddie Fox, Jenny Galloway, Patrick Godfrey, Nicholas Jones, Tommy McDonnell, Lucy Robinson, Tristan Shepherd, Richard Teverson, Sarah Waddell, Michael Webber and Tristram Wymark.

The play opens at the Old Vic Theatre on 29 March 2011, with previews from 17 March. It is based on the  true story of Alma Rattenbury, who was put on trial in 1935 along with her 18-year-old lover, accused of killing her husband. Vilified by the public as much for her seduction of a younger man as the murder of her husband, the play examines the role of passion, guilt and loyalty in 1930s England. Cusack plays socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman of the trial, Edith Davenport.

Thea Sharrock directed Rattigan’s After the Dance at the National Theatre earlier this year and will direct Alison Steadman in Blithe Spirit from 2 March 2011 at the Apollo Theatre.

Book tickets to see Cause Celebre at the Old Vic Theatre in London

NIAMH CUSACK – CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Theatre Gate Theatre Dublin: Hester Worsley in A Woman of No Importance, Irina in Three Sisters, Nora in A Doll’s House; RSC: Desdemona in Othello, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Jane Hogarth in The Art of Success, Rosalind in As You Like It; West Yorkshire Playhouse: Pegeen Mike in The Playboy of the Western World, Gemma in Captain Swing; Lady Mary in The Admirable Crichton (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Gustchen in The Tutor (Old Vic), Nora Clitheroe in The Plough and the Stars (Young Vic), Irina in Three Sisters (Royal Exchange Manchester), Helena in The Faerie Queen (Aix-en-Provence), The Maids (Donmar), Nabokov’s Gloves, Molière’s Learned Ladies, Portia in The Merchant of Venice (Chichester Festival Theatre), Serafina Pekkala in His Dark Materials, Ghosts (Gate London); Television Lucky Sunil, Poirot, Till We Meet Again, Jeeves and Wooster, Heartbeat, Angel Train, Shadow of the Sun, Colour Blind, Rhinoceros, Little Bird, A&E, Loving You, Too Good to be True, State of Mind; Films Paris By Night, Fools of Fortune, The Playboys, The Closer You Get; Awards Irish Life Award, Irish Post Award.

Offer: Blithe Spirit with Alison Steadman

Save £8.50 on tickets to see Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre in London

Offer valid Monday to Thursday from 2nd to 24th March

Featuring an all-star cast including Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey) as Madame Arcati, Ruthie Henshall (Crazy for You) as Elvira, Hermione Norris (Spooks) as Ruth and Robert Bathurst (Cold Feet) as Charles Condomine.

Enjoy a special offer on the sparkling new West End revival of Noel Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit, at the Apollo Theatre in London from 2 March 2011.

In the play, the novelist Charles Condomine (Bathurst) and his second wife Ruth (Norris) are haunted when an eccentric medium (Steadman) manages to conjure up the ghost of Charles’s neurotic and beautiful first wife, Elvira (Henshall), at a séance.

Noel Coward’s witty comedy will be directed by Thea Sharrock, who recently enjoyed enormous success for her production of Terence Rattigan’s After The Dance at the National Theatre.

Save £8.50 on tickets to see Blithe Spirit at the Apollo Theatre in London

Offer valid Monday to Thursday from 2nd to 24th March

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